How to mount a transducer without putting holes in the boat

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trophybass13

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Hi, I have a landau 1436 jon boat. I just bought the Humminbird 570 sonar.
when i opened the box and looked at the directions on how to mount the transducer i thought to myself, "theres no way that all the fisherman in the world with fishfinders had to put holes in their boat to mount the transducer". so I am looking for ideas on how to mount the transducer to the back of the transom without putting holes in it. also if anyone has ideas on how to make it easily removable at the launch because the thought of wrecking the transducer to my $200 fishfinder while retrieving my boat scares the hell outta me. thanks.
 
Honestly, we've made all the same transducer mounting mistakes everyone else has, and then some. In the nearly 40 years we have mounted transducers, we've learned how to do it right. Here are a couple of recent SternMate™ news releases in "The Great Lakes Scuttlebutt". "Scuttlebutt" is a well respected, very popular, boating magazine in the Great Lakes region...ENJOY!

https://www.greatlakesscuttlebutt.com/index.php?src=news&srctype=detail&category=Press%20Room&refno=155

https://www.greatlakesscuttlebutt.com/index.php?src=news&srctype=detail&category=Press%20Room&refno=281
 
any ideas on how to do it "redneck" style, and wing it with cheap household or easy to buy items?
 
trophybass13 said:
any ideas on how to do it "redneck" style, and wing it with cheap household or easy to buy items?

If you look at how a humminbird transducer mounts you will see that it can flip up if it bangs on something. This will prevent it from breaking. I would think that other brands have similar designs. I have 8 transducer mounting holes in the back of my boat. Most people do actually put holes in the boat to mount the transducer, speedometer, live-well fill/drain etc. After the first whole the rest are easy.

You can use something like this if you want to keep the holes above the waterline:
https://www.cabelas.com/sonar-acces...-958E-DF11-A0C8-002219318F67&mr:referralID=NA
 
i mounted my last 2 by cutting a strip off of a plastic (?) cutting board,drill a hole for a bolt,and screw it to the board,and clamp the board to the transome with a c clamp.makes for a quick removal,or you can sikaflex it to the transom
 
Bite the bullet and drill the holes. :lol:

Lot's of boats get that treatment all the time. It's a mental block thing. I built boats for years, and drilled so many holes in $75,000+ boats that it didn't bother me doing it to my own.

Now with that said, I would drill and attach a board of some sort that way there are only two holes. Then the transducer attaches to it.



Or you could always buy a bow mount trolling motor and connect it to that, but then you won't have the finder until the bow mount motor is in the water.......
 
I used this suction cup mount. I stuck it on at the beginning of last year and it never came loose all season. I'm not sure if it will work with your Humminbird though... maybe someone makes a universal mount or maybe you could modify this one to work?

To mount my speed sensor, I glued a piece of composite decking (free sample from Home Depot) with some marine grade adhesive and drilled/screwed the speed sensor into that.
 
I have heard of using rare earth magnets. Epoxy one to the boat and one to the transducer mount.
https://www.leevalley.com/en/wood/page.aspx?p=32065&cat=1,42363,42348&ap=1
 
Just saw a bracket in the new BPS catalog with a clamp that goes on your transom or side of the boat and the arm goes down into the water.
 

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